Naomi Campbell has been banned from being a charity trustee after a watchdog investigation uncovered widespread evidence of financial misconduct at the poverty relief charity she founded.
The supermodel was disqualified for five years after a Charity Commission inquiry found Fashion For Relief passed on only a small fraction of the millions of pounds it raised from star-studded celebrity fashion events to good causes.
The charity inappropriately spent tens of thousands of pounds on luxury hotel rooms, flights, spa treatments, personal security and cigarettes for Campbell, while unauthorised consultancy payments running into hundreds of thousands of pounds were made to one of Campbell’s fellow trustees, the commission said.
It found that over a five-year period from 2016, Fashion For Relief raised just under £4.8m from a series of fashion shows but paid out only £389,000 in grants to partner charities once the cost of events and other expenses were accounted for.
Nearly £350,000 was later recovered from the charity by interim managers appointed by the commission and paid to charities Save the Children and the Mayor’s Fund for London, which reported Fashion For Relief to the regulators four years ago after failing to receive promised payments from fundraising agreements..
Campbell’s fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich, who the inquiry found received £290,000 in unauthorised consultancy fees and £26,000 a year in travel expenses from the charity over a two-year period, was disqualified from being a charity trustee for nine years.
Hellmich proposed to the commission to repay the fees and expenses in February 2022 and a repayment plan was agreed with the commission. The full amount was repaid in April 2023.
A third trustee, Veronica Chou, was banned for four years.
Fashion for Relief has previously argued it was not solely a fundraising charity but also a platform that, through its high-profile fundraising events, encouraged donors to give directly to its partner charities and good causes.
The commission report, however, reveals that it did not immediately pay Save the Children €450,000 (£375,000) raised at a 2017 fundraising event. Fashion for Relief paid some of the funds, and the remaining money it owed – £147,000 – were eventually paid by Fashion for Relief’s interim managers in January 2023.
The commission concluded there had been serious misconduct, financial mismanagement and poor governance at Fashion For Relief since it was established as a UK charity in 2015.
The inquiry report highlighted shambolic financial management and chaotic record-keeping, including failure to keep evidence of invoices and receipts or formal minutes of meetings and decisions. The charity had no full-time staff but referred administrative and accounting matters to outside advisers.
The charity was charged €14,800 for a flight taking a former unnamed trustee and an unnamed donor to a fundraising event in Cannes in May 2018, the commission said. While there Campbell stayed in a €3,000-a-night hotel room and racked up personal security costs of more than €4,000.
Other expenses incurred by the charity on behalf of Campbell during the trip included just under €8,000 on spa treatments, room service, purchases of cigarettes and hotel products. Campbell stayed at the hotel for six nights of which only two were attributable to the charity event, the commission found.
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Campbell and Hellmich told commission investigators the hotel costs incurred by the charity were subsequently re-charged to an unnamed donor but investigators could find no evidence that Fashion for Relief had received donor payments covering these expenses.
Fashion for Relief was founded by Campbell with the aim of raising money to tackle poverty and support economically deprived young people. The supermodel claimed the brand raised millions of dollars for good causes from charity fashion shows since 2005.
The commission started its formal inquiry into Fashion for Relief in November 2021, subsequently sidelining Campbell and Hellmich. Its interim managers discovered the charity was effectively insolvent, with insufficient cash to pay creditors. The charity was finally wound up in March.
A statement for Save the Children said: “Save the Children thanks the Charity Commission for its thorough inquiry into Fashion for Relief and enabling the payment of outstanding funds owed to the charity. Save the Children’s relationship with Fashion for Relief ended in 2018 and we have no plans to work with them in the future.”
The Charity Commission’s assistant director for specialist investigations and standards, Tim Hopkins, said: “Trustees are legally required to make decisions that are in their charity’s best interests and to comply with their legal duties and responsibilities. Our inquiry has found that the trustees of this charity failed to do so, which has resulted in our action to disqualify them.”
Campbell and Hellmich were approached for comment.